The Golden WestMae West in the Movies, on Radio & Televisionby Billy Ingram

Mae West was a massive
film star in the 1930s who basically walked away from full-time show business
when censorship made her sexually suggestive brand of humor impossible
for the studios to distribute.

Both on screen and off, for all of her life, Mae West played the broadly seductive Diamond Li'l character she created
in vaudeville in the 1920s.

She
was the very first sex symbol. "'Cause nobody used the word 'sex'
until I used it in my play," she remarked to an interviewer in the
1970s. "Except to differentiate between the male and female, like
he's of the male sex. After I was called a sex symbol and the studios
saw how much money my films made, they wanted others."

Mae single-handedly rescued Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy when She
Done Him Wrong grossed $2 million in 1933. That would be $140 million
in today's dollars. (Paramount recognizes that debt of gratitude with
a building on the lot named after her.)

What did she do to create such controversy? Her movies were suggestive
to be sure, but they contained no nudity, no profanity, and very little
violence. But the honky tonk atmosphere she crafted melted off the screen, you could almost smell the
cigarette smoke and cheap booze coming off the screen.

Though her
films are filled with broad characterizations, ethnic and otherwise, she
was one of the first to allow black characters to have their own identities
and interact with her as equals. This served as some kind of balance to
the pervasive subservient Mammy characters that inhabited her films (and
almost every other movie of the thirties).

What uptight people objected to was that Mae West had the nerve to portray
confident women who weren't afraid to use their sexual wiles to get what
they wanted. "I was the first liberated woman, you know. No guy was
going to get the best of me, that's what I wrote all my scripts about."
Her best movies are pastiches of Mae dealing with men she just met, the
men in her past, and the man she's after next.

She also had total creative control over her projects. That couldn't
protect her from the censors who were targeting her in particular.

One of the best films, I'm No Angel also from 1933, had Mae playing
the thirties' version of the stripper with a heart of gold and a keen
eye for sugar daddies in the form of Miss Tira, who goes from a tent to
the penthouse thanks to the kindness of strangers.

In it, the carnival barker
announces Tira's act with suggestive comments like: "Boys, with the
right kind of encouragement, she'll throw discretion to the winds and
her hips to the north, south, east, and west." While audience members are leering in the most unsavory way, Mae is moaning
low and slinking slowly down the platform before belting, 'They Call Me
Sister Honky Tonk.' She catches every eye in the crowd but when she saunters
off stage she mutters under her breath, "Suckers!"

A common theme in modern movies like Pretty Woman, this type
of wanton behavior was unheard of in motion pictures of the era. Take
Tira's advice to a runaway girl: "Always remember, honey, a good
motto is; take all you can get and give as little as possible. Never let
one man worry your mind. Find 'em, fool 'em and forget 'em."

Religious leaders condemned Mae West as a negative role model, and forced
the Hollywood studios to curtail her films drastically. They were offended by lines
like; "Between two evils, I always pick the one I haven't tried before,"
"Why don't you come up and see me sometime" and "Is that
a gun in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?" (now you know
where THAT came from).

Powerful muckraking newspaper publisher William
Randolph Hearst even called on Congress to do something about the Mae
West "menace."

She dabbled in radio in the forties, usually making headlines with her
brash (and always hilarious) appearances. Especially shocking to the faint hearted was her
Christmastime, 1937 guest spot on the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy
program where Mae West and Don Ameche performed a skit set in the Garden
of Eden that was loaded with double-entendres. Here's an excerpt:

Eve: "Listen Adam, I tell ya' you gotta get me out of this place.
You gotta break the lease."

Adam: "Yeah, but what for, this is Eden everything is peaceful and
quiet and safe."

Eve: "That's the trouble, it's too safe. I tell ya' it's disgustin'"

Adam: "What are you talking about?"

Eve: "Adam, you don't know a thing about women."

Adam: "Oh, you apparently forget you were originally one of my own
ribs.

Eve: "A rib once and now I'm beefin'"

Adam: "Me, I know everything about women."

Eve: "That's coverin' a lot of territory. Listen long, lazy and
lukewarm, you think I want to stay in this place all my life?"

Adam: "I do and I tell you you're one of my ribs."

Eve: "Yeah, but one of your broken ribs. Couple of months of peace
and security and a woman's bored all the way down to the bottom of her
marriage certificate"

In an exchange with Charlie McCarthy she quipped, "Charles, I remember
our date and have the splinters to prove it"

Tame by modern standards but it was serious business in 1937 - NBC banned
Mae West from appearing or even being mentioned on their network and the
FCC issued a letter of reprimand to the network and the affiliates. The
public was outraged and Ameche recalled, "The Mae West episode? I
almost got thrown off the air for life because of that skit." Bergen
was forced to apologize for the incident the next week and Mae was left
scandalized. Again.

She didn't return to radio until 1949, ironically on NBC, with an appearance
on The Chesterfield Supper Club starring Perry Como, originally
simulcast on radio and supposedly shot for television with the cast standing
at the microphone.

Perry Como: "Ah, Miss West, you're as pretty as ever. You're as
pretty as a picture."

Mae West: "What are you looking at, the picture
or the frame?"

On that show, they performed a skit entitled, Little Red Riding Hood
in which she quips, "I'm on my way to see my sick old grandma, but
I could be talked out of it."

It was around this time that the star mounted a bombastic Las Vegas revue that
was a smash hit, she toured with that show and others that she wrote and
produced throughout the 1950s.

The singer/comedienne could afford to do
as she liked, an incredibly shrewd investor, she bought up major parcels
of land in what is now downtown Van Nuys, a thriving suburb of Los Angeles.
As a result, she became one of the wealthiest women in the world by the
1950's.